TROUBLING INFORMATION

Category: GW Bush Admin

Bush Guard Service: Summary of Disappeared Records

“Bush’s National Guard File Missing Records” — Matt Kelley (AP) at news.yahoo.com, 9/5/04:

Records of Bush’s service have significant gaps, starting in 1972. Bush has said he left Texas that year to work on the unsuccessful Senate campaign in Alabama of family friend Winton Blount.

The five kinds of missing files are:

— A report from the Texas Air National Guard to Bush’s local draft board certifying that Bush remained in good standing. The government has released copies of those DD Form 44 documents for Bush for 1971 and earlier years but not for 1972 or 1973. Records from Bush’s draft board in Houston do not show his draft status changed after he joined the guard in 1968. The AP obtained the draft board records Aug. 27 under the Freedom of Information Act.

— Records of a required investigation into why Bush lost flight status. When Bush skipped his 1972 physical, regulations required his Texas commanders to “direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination,” according to the Air Force manual at the time. An investigative report was supposed to be forwarded “with the command recommendation” to Air Force officials “for final determination.”

Bush’s spokesmen have said he skipped the exam because he knew he would be doing desk duty in Alabama. But Bush was required to take the physical by the end of July 1972, more than a month before he won final approval to train in Alabama.

— A written acknowledgment from Bush that he had received the orders grounding him. His Texas commanders were ordered to have Bush sign such a document; but none has been released.

— Reports of formal counseling sessions Bush was required to have after missing more than three training sessions. Bush missed at least five months’ worth of National Guard training in 1972. No documents have surfaced indicating Bush was counseled or had written authorization to skip that training or make it up later. Commanders did have broad discretion to allow guardsmen to make up for missed training sessions, said Weaver and Lawrence Korb, Pentagon . . . personnel chief during the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1985.

“If you missed it, you could make it up,” said Korb, who now works for the Center for American Progress, which supports Kerry.

— A signed statement from Bush acknowledging he could be called to active duty if he did not promptly transfer to another guard unit after leaving Texas. The statement was required as part of a Vietnam-era crackdown on no-show guardsmen. Bush was approved in September 1972 to train with the Alabama unit, more than four months after he left Texas.

September 6, 2004
Texts

Craig Calhoun, “The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travelers: Toward a Critique of Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism” (2002). C. Wright Mills, “On Intellectual Craftsmanship” (1959). Lion Kimbrough, How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think (2003). A treasury of Tom Swift texts. An infinity of George W. Bush speeches. NASA’s Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Christian Bök’s Eunoia. The 2004 Bulwer-Lytton Awards. Seymour Hersh’s address to the ACLU (July 8, 2004) on the unfolding story of American war crimes. People write exactly one hundred words a day and leave them at a website. Discussions among testy copyeditors. An outline of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. A scientific method FAQ. The 1,000 Journals Project. A chronology of the secretarial profession. US Presidents’ inaugural addresses and state of the union messages from George Washington to the present. Online books at Project Gutenberg and Bartleby.com. 100 top American speeches, most with links to .mp3 audio versions. Online book directories: The Online Books Page at The University of Pennsylvania, links to collections and archives at the University of Adelaide, and a collection of links at The British Columbia Digital Library.

June 30, 2004
Endeavors

Watch a baseball game. Cy Brown’s hole. Make silver nitrate without dying. Bush/Zombie Reagan in 2004. Three articles about cooking pizza for Kim Jong-il (1) (2) (3). Kevin and Dave visited a decommissioned nuclear missile silo for you. Patrick Combs deposits a junk mail check. Jeannine deals with her Chiari 1 malformation. A visual catalog of the McClintock household. Rebecca Caldwell’s carthedral. Spiderman reviews crayons. NASA’s Mars Rover home page. An explanation of cricket. An effort to find a lost frog. A traveling Gorn. A campaign against lip balm. Job hunting: JobStar Job Search Guide. Interviewing: The twenty-five most difficult questions you’ll ask or answer. Resumes: advice from Texas A&M University, Colorado State University, and The Rockport Institute. Communicating with budgies. Kid of Speed documents The Serpent’s Wall. “Right now, 30 percent of all hermit crabs on our shorelines are living in shells that are too small for them”: an effort to help. Heart ‘n Soul, a music theater group for young people with learning disabilities. Projects at spurse.org.

May 5, 2004
Photography

Soviet war photography at Howard Schickler Fine Art. A Mike Disfarmer gallery. Five thousand photographs by Bret Wallach. Photos of occupied Japan. The Bush asshole mosaic and the Ashcroft porn mosaic. The Bush dead soldier mosaic. Photos of derelict London and Britannia Moribundia. Rob Dobi’s photos of New England ruins. Some Japanese ruins. Photos of the ice-encrusted Sir William Alexander. Shaun O’Boyle’s ruin photography. Mark-Steffen Göwecke’s photos within photos.

April 12, 2004
Politics

An animation of US congressional polarization. Billionaires for Bush. A map of hate groups in the United States. What $87 billion looks like. “So welcome fellow patriot to USA Patriotism!” Dean for America begets Democracy for America. Browse presidential campaign donors by name and location at fundrace.org. The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression’s Jefferson Muzzles Awards.

March 19, 2004
War

Faces of the Fallen: dead American soldiers. Coalition casualty report at cnn.com. Another at lunaville.org. Costofwar.com. Peter Bergen on Laurie Mylroie’s influence on the decision to go to war. The Guardian’s Iraq timeline: 7/16/1979 to 1/31/2004 and 2/1/2004 to the present. Empire Notes weblog. More Iraq weblogs: Baghdad Burning, Back to Iraq, Salaam Pax and Raed, Juan Cole, Healing Iraq, and Kevin Sites. See also Sistani.org. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting’s Iraqi Press Monitor. See also The Iraq Blog Count.

March 19, 2004
Weblogs

Technorati Top 100. Dive into Mark. Tantek Çelik’s weblog. Bushrice04.org (that could be ephemeral). Mars Rover Weblog. Leather Egg. Blanketfort. I Am Eating My Husband’s Soul.

February 29, 2004
Public Opinion: Perception of War Changes Swiftly

Pew Research Center Poll, 3/25/03: “Public Confidence In War Effort Falters, but Support for War Holds Steady”: About 3/4 of Americans continue to support the war, but the proportion who think it is “going very well” is dropping.

The percentage of the public thinking the war was going very well was as high as 71% on Friday and Saturday, only to fall to 52% on Sunday and 38% Monday as the public learned of American casualties and POW’s. Overall, the interviews by Sunday and Monday found about as many people thinking the war effort was going just fairly well (41%) as opposed to very well (45%). Only 8% went as far as to say the war effort was not going well.

But there are no indications that declining optimism about progress in the war is affecting overall support for military action or President Bush’s handling of the conflict. Roughly seven-in-ten Americans say it was the right decision to use military force against Iraq, a figure that remained fairly stable during the polling period. And about the same number (71%) give the president positive marks for his handling of the war.

March 26, 2003
Not as Easy as They Thought

Gideon Rose, “The Hawks Were Wrong” (Slate, 3/25/03):

With a few notable exceptions (such as Robert W. Kagan and, more recently, Kenneth Pollack), the Iraq hawks’ favored strategy for toppling Saddam involved supporting the Iraqi opposition and, in particular, the Iraqi National Congress. Most of the dirty work of regime change, they argued, would not have to be done by the United States, but rather could and would be done by Iraqis themselves. The only things needed from America were financial and diplomatic support, training and equipment, and air cover. The actual fighting, if there was any, would be contracted out to local forces. . . .

But the war’s progress to date is enough to put paid to the idea that Iraq was a paper tiger and that Saddam might have fallen quickly and easily to the less-than-daunting military prowess of the INC.

March 26, 2003
Empire

“The Arrogant Empire” — Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek, 3/24/03:

[T]he United States will spend as much next year on defense as the rest of the world put together (yes, all 191 countries). And it will do so devoting 4 percent of its GDP, a low level by postwar standards.

American dominance is not simply military. The U.S. economy is as large as the next three — Japan, Germany and Britain — put together. With 5 percent of the world’s population, this one country accounts for 43 percent of the world’s economic production, 40 percent of its high-technology production and 50 percent of its research and development. If you look at the indicators of future growth, all are favorable for America. It is more dynamic economically, more youthful demographically and more flexible culturally than any other part of the world. It is conceivable that America’s lead, especially over an aging and sclerotic Europe, will actually increase over the next two decades.

Given this situation, perhaps what is most surprising is that the world has not ganged up on America already. Since the beginnings of the state system in the 16th century, international politics has seen one clear pattern — the formation of balances of power against the strong. Countries with immense military and economic might arouse fear and suspicion, and soon others coalesce against them. It happened to the Hapsburg Empire in the 17th century, France in the late 18th and early 19th century, Germany twice in the early 20th century, and the Soviet Union in the latter half of the 20th century. At this point, most Americans will surely protest: “But we’re different!” Americans — this writer included — think of themselves as a nation that has never sought to occupy others, and that through the years has been a progressive and liberating force. But historians tell us that all dominant powers thought they were special. Their very success confirmed for them that they were blessed. But as they became ever more powerful, the world saw them differently. The English satirist John Dryden described this phenomenon in a poem set during the Biblical King David’s reign. “When the chosen people grew too strong,” he wrote, “The rightful cause at length became the wrong.”

March 26, 2003
Clear Channel Rallies and the Bush Administration

Paul Krugman on Clear Channel’s sponsorship of prowar rallies (New York Times, 3/25/03):

Who has been organizing those pro-war rallies? The answer, it turns out, is that they are being promoted by key players in the radio industry — with close links to the Bush administration. . . .

Experienced Bushologists let out a collective “Aha!” when Clear Channel was revealed to be behind the pro-war rallies, because the company’s top management has a history with George W. Bush. The vice chairman of Clear Channel is Tom Hicks, whose name may be familiar to readers of this column. When Mr. Bush was governor of Texas, Mr. Hicks was chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company, called Utimco, and Clear Channel’s chairman, Lowry Mays, was on its board. Under Mr. Hicks, Utimco placed much of the university’s endowment under the management of companies with strong Republican Party or Bush family ties. In 1998 Mr. Hicks purchased the Texas Rangers in a deal that made Mr. Bush a multimillionaire.

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, but a good guess is that we’re now seeing the next stage in the evolution of a new American oligarchy. As Jonathan Chait has written in The New Republic, in the Bush administration “government and business have melded into one big ‘us.’ ” On almost every aspect of domestic policy, business interests rule: “Scores of midlevel appointees . . . now oversee industries for which they once worked.” We should have realized that this is a two-way street: if politicians are busy doing favors for businesses that support them, why shouldn’t we expect businesses to reciprocate by doing favors for those politicians — by, for example, organizing “grass roots” rallies on their behalf?

March 25, 2003
Who’s Responsible for the Forged Nuclear Documents?

CIA ducks culpability for forged nuke docs (Slate, 3/23/03)

With CIA analysts accusing the Bush administration of coercing them, the administration is likely to volley back in this internecine war fought on the battlefields of the nation’s dailies. A glimmer of that coming clash appears in the last paragraph of the [Washington] Post story, where a State Department spokesman flings the dead cat back over Foggy Bottom’s fence toward Langley. The Post reports:

The State Department’s December fact sheet, issued to point out glaring omissions in a declaration Iraq said accounted for all of its prohibited weapons, said the declaration “ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger.” Asked this week to comment on the fact sheet, a CIA spokesman referred questions on the matter to the State Department, where a spokesman said “everything we wrote in the fact sheet was cleared with the agency.”

Still unanswered are these urgent questions: Who forged the documents? Given the documents’ transparent inauthenticity, why were they given such credence? Who in the administration pushed the CIA to validate them (if it did)? Why didn’t the CIA push back?

March 24, 2003